Abortion clinics skip counseling, coerce vulnerable women into political activism

Many post-abortive women have talked about the lack of thorough counseling in the clinics where they had their abortions.  Women have described the abortion process as an “assembly line.”  Stories of rushed, biased, and nonexistent counseling are sadly common.

Even abortion clinic workers have admitted that they spend very little time counseling women. A big reason for this is that counseling takes up time and slows patient flow at the clinics. Slower patient flow means fewer abortions, which means less profit for the clinic.

As one pro-choice author said in her book The Regulation of Sexuality: Experiences of Family-Planning Workers:

 … As the clinic director was fond of pointing out, counseling did not generate revenue for the clinic; being seen in the medical room did. Perhaps the greatest problem with slowdowns [counseling sessions that took longer than average] was the risk of annoying doctors.

Jenny Higgins, a pro-choice clinic worker who does abortion counseling, says:

Sometimes even counseling was done in groups to save time, ten or fifteen women sitting in a circle… At other times I was strictly limited to a five-minute counseling session for each patient.

So, knowing that abortion clinics tend to offer little time counseling to begin with, it is disturbing to learn that some clinics actually use “counseling” time not to explore a woman’s decision, screen her for potential post-abortion problems, or give her information about the abortion procedure.  Instead, they indoctrinate her on the pro-choice cause and coerce her into pro-choice activism.

Former abortion clinic worker Lorraine LaNeve stated, in a conference for former abortion providers:

I started my job functioning in all the duties of a nurse. First, by preparing the clients in the waiting room by medicating them with Valium and then influencing my captive audience to write letters to the elected officials pleading that abortion should remain a woman’s right….

LaNeve admits to manipulating drugged women into writing letters supporting the pro-choice cause. These women, under the influence of Valium, were easy to coerce into pro-choice activism. It is appalling to consider that the women are manipulated in such a way. It is even more appalling to realize that these letter writing sessions replaced “counseling” at the clinic.  There was not time enough to counsel women, but there was time enough to coerce them into political activism.

Pro-choice author Marian Faux, who wrote a book about abortion that profiled pro-choice and pro-life activists, wrote about how one clinic utilized its “counseling sessions”:

… [T]he counselors have also been using the counseling sessions to talk to women about the fact that legalized abortion is now threatened and what they can do to preserve the right to choose. Women are given post cards they can fill out and mail to their elected officials asking them to support pro-choice [causes]. The clinic also prints flyers that educate women about the abortion right.

Women at abortion clinics, drugged and very often emotionally traumatized, are extremely vulnerable to this kind of manipulation by clinic staff.  The needs of these women are do not seem to be respected in any way. When counseling becomes indoctrination, women are poorly served. If a crisis pregnancy center were to take a woman in crisis, administer drugs, and influence her to write pro-life letters before she would be allowed to leave, pro-choicers would be up in arms, and rightly so.  This kind of unethical behavior only shows the lows to which the abortion industry will sink.